This paper reviews recent evidence on food intake and nutrition in India. It attempts to make sense of various puzzles, particularly the decline of average calorie intake during the last 25 years. This decline has occurred across the distribution of real per capita expenditure, in spite of increases in real income and no long-term increase in the relative price of food. One hypothesis is that calorie requirements have declined due to lower levels of physical activity or improvements in the health environment. If correct, this does not imply that there are no calorie deficits in the Indian population – nothing could be further from the truth. These deficits are reflected in some of the worst anthropometric indicators in the world, and the sluggish rate of improvement of these indicators is of major concern. Yet recent trends remain confused and there is an urgent need for better nutrition monitoring.

/pdf/food-and-nutrition-in-india-facts-and-interpretations-1trgy4p4w8.pdf

Food and nutrition in India: facts and interpretations.

China's rapidly growing economy and energy consumption are creating serious environmental problems on both local and global scales. Understanding the key drivers behind China's growing energy consumption and the associated CO2 emissions is critical for the development of global climate policies and provides insight into how other emerging economies may develop a low emissions future. Using recently released Chinese economic input-output data and structural decomposition analysis we analyze how changes in China's technology, economic structure, urbanization, and lifestyles affect CO2 emissions. We find that infrastructure construction and urban household consumption, both in turn driven by urbanization and lifestyle changes, have outpaced efficiency improvements in the growth of CO2 emissions. Net trade had a small effect on total emissions due to equal, but significant, growth in emissions from the production of exports and emissions avoided by imports. Technology and efficiency improvements have only partially offset consumption growth, but there remains considerable untapped potential to reduce emissions by improving both production and consumption systems. As China continues to rapidly develop there is an opportunity to further implement and extend policies, such as the Circular Economy, that will help China avoid the high emissions path taken by today's developed countries.

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es070108f

China's growing CO2 emissions--a race between increasing consumption and efficiency gains.

Since 1995 approximately 325 publications on stature have appeared in the social sciences, which is more than a four-fold increase in the rate of production relative to the period 1977-1994. The expansion occurred in several areas, but especially within economics, indicating that heights are now widely accepted as a useful measure of human welfare. Much of this new work extends beyond the traditional bailiwick of anthropometric history, including biological welfare during economic and political crises; anthropometric influences on wages; the welfare of women relative to men in the contemporary world; the fetal origins hypothesis; and inequality in the developing world. The approach has also expanded within economic history to consider the consequences of empire for colonials; the health of populations lacking traditional measures of social performance; the consequences of smallpox; and very long-term trends in health. Much has also been learned about socioeconomic aspects of inequality, the welfare implications of industrialization, and socioeconomic determinants of stature. The last is a work in progress and one may doubt whether sufficient longitudinal evidence will become available for a complete understanding of the variety and strength of pathways that affect human physical growth.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/nber_w14536.pdf?abstractid=1312629&mirid=1

Heights and Human Welfare: Recent Developments and New Directions

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w14536/w14536.pdf

Heights and human welfare: Recent developments and new directions

Prices differ across space: from province to province, from rural (or urban) areas in one province to rural (or urban) areas in another province, and from rural to urban areas within one province. Systematic differences in prices across a range of goods and services in different localities imply regional differences in the costs of living. If high‐income provinces also have high costs of living and low‐income provinces have low costs of living, the use of nominal income measures in explaining such economic outcomes as inequality can lead to misinterpretations. Income should be adjusted for costs of living. We are interested in the sign and magnitude of the adjustments needed, their changes over time, and their impact on economic outcomes in China. In this article, we construct a set of (rural, urban, total) provincial‐level spatial price deflators for the years 1984–2004 that can be used to obtain provincial‐level income measures adjusted for purchasing power. We provide illustrations of the sign...

/pdf/spatial-price-differences-in-china-estimates-and-1motbnvtxb.pdf

Spatial price differences in China : estimates and implications

Although urban China has experienced spectacular income growth over the last two decades, increases in inequality, reduction in social welfare provision, deregulation of grain prices, and increases in income uncertainty in the 1990s have increased urban poverty. Using a large repeated cross-section household survey data from 1986 to 2000, this study maps out the change in income, inequality, and poverty over the 15 year period and investigates the determinants of poverty. It is found that the increase in the poverty rate in the 1990s is associated with the increase in the relative food price, and the need to spend on education, housing and medical care which were previously paid by the state. In addition, the increase in the saving rate of the poor due to an increase in income uncertainty contributes significantly to the increase in poverty measured in terms of expenditure. Even though income growth reduces poverty, the radical reform measures implemented in the 1990s have sufficiently offset this gain that urban poverty is higher in 2000 than in 1986.

Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in Urban China, 1986-2000

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20751/1/dp1452.pdf

Although urban China has experienced a rapid income growth over the last twenty years, nutrition intake for the low income group declined in the 1990s. Does this imply a zero or negative income elasticity for the low income group? This paper examines this issue using large representative sample of repeated cross-sectional data for the period 1986-2000. It is found that income elasticities of calorie consumption for urban households are far from zero, and the lower the income level the higher the income elasticity. The main reason for the reduction in calorie consumption for the low income group in the early 1990s was a sharp increase in food price. In addition, in the mid to late 1990s large scale social welfare reform increased households' need to pay for education, medical, housing expenses and the need to save for future consumption and income uncertainty. These factors seem to have played an important role in suppressing nutrition consumption of the low income group during this period.

Impact of Income Growth and Economic Reform on Nutrition Intake in Urban China: 1986-2000

Urban China has experienced rapid income growth over the past 20 years. However, nutrition availability for the poor declined in the 1990s. Does this imply a zero or negative income elasticity? Using a large representative urban sample of repeated cross‐sectional data for the period 1986–2000, we find that income elasticities of calorie availability are far from zero, and the lower the income level, the higher the income elasticity. The main reason for the reduction in calorie availability in the early 1990s was a sharp increase in food prices. Afterward, calorie availability for the above‐medium‐income groups stabilized and then increased. For the low‐income groups, calorie availability continued to decline, which may be related to the large‐scale social welfare reform that increased households’ need to pay for nonfood necessities, such as education, medical, and housing expenses.

/pdf/impact-of-income-growth-and-economic-reform-on-nutrition-1ehevows14.pdf

Impact of Income Growth and Economic Reform on Nutrition Availability in Urban China: 1986–2000

Concerns about incentives and targeting naturally arise when cash transfers are used to fight poverty. The authors address these concerns in the context of China's Di Bao program, which uses means-tested transfers to try to assure that no registered urban resident has an income below a stipulated poverty line. There is little sign in the data of poverty traps due to high benefit withdrawal rates. Targeting performance is excellent by various measures. Di Bao appears to be better targeted than any other program in the developing world. However, all but one measure of targeting performance is found to be uninformative, or even deceptive, about impacts on poverty. The authors find that the majority of the poor are not receiving help, even with a generous allowance for measurement errors. While on paper, Di Bao would eliminate urban poverty, it falls well short of that ideal in practice.

/pdf/di-bao-a-guaranteed-minimum-income-in-urban-china-1utefxacqs.pdf

Youjuan Wang

Papers

Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in Urban China, 1986-2000

Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in Urban China, 1986-2000

Impact of Income Growth and Economic Reform on Nutrition Intake in Urban China: 1986-2000

Impact of Income Growth and Economic Reform on Nutrition Availability in Urban China: 1986–2000

Di Bao : a guaranteed minimum income in urban China?